


all things considered (it could be worse)

by rarmaster



Series: don't you worry child [5]
Category: Tales of Symphonia, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, XC2 AU so resonance and emotion bleeds are a thing, chara copes with a human giving a shit about their boundaries, everyone here understands Humanity Is Kinda Fucky, i'm allowed to write a crossover with my AU and you can't fucking stop me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 05:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20634230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Chara wakes up somewhere unfamiliar with someone they don't recognize. This goes: terribly, until suddenly it doesn't.Or:Team M2meets and Chara finds a kindred spirit in a boy who would kind of love it if humanity would fucking burn.(DYWC)





	all things considered (it could be worse)

**Author's Note:**

> housekeeping: Chara is from a post-undertale everyone lives scenario
> 
> Anna and Mithos are from YWKON, which is a XC2 AU, because I am living my best life. I am living my best life so much so in fact, that Anna and Mithos aren't from YWKON but rather [an adjusted version of YWKON from rp shenanigans](https://summonerd.dreamwidth.org/500.html) that kicks off 10 years before YWKON because in this version of events they are forced to get to know each other instead of Mithos pretending Anna doesn't exist, and that's the kind of dynamic I wanted to explore between them
> 
> but mostly we're just here to watch Chara be baffled by Anna caring about their boundaries and Chara and Mithos bonding over how much humanity sucks

“Oh, Architect, the fuck,” comes a voice, distant, adult, _unfamiliar._

Chara’s eyes snap open.

They are lying on their back in a sea of itchy dead grass, which sucks, but ranks significantly lower on their list of _things that are kind of shitty right now, _considering there are _three moons _in the sky (_the sky, at least, is otherwise normal, as is the sun)_. Earth does not have three moons, last they checked. So, pray tell, the _fuck? _Is this some weird dream? …another world?

The other person here groans, and fear grips Chara’s chest. They are in _another world _and _they are not alone _and whoever they are with they _do not recognize the voice of. _They upgrade their list from _kind of shitty _to _EXTREMELY shitty, _the extremely in all caps with three underlines and everything. They vault upright fast enough to make their head protest, but they ignore that, nerves tight, eyes searching wildly and rapidly for—

There’s a woman kneeling in the grass some ten feet from them (_which in all honesty is way too close for comfort_), and the literal only good news right now is that she is rubbing her head like she is in pain at the precise moment and has not seem to have noticed Chara (_yet_). Chara wills their body further upright, gathering their strength to—bolt, probably, even though that won’t be the smartest course of action since apparently they are not on Earth, anymore, but the other option is _interacting with a goddamn human they do not know, _and they cannot trust like that. They get caught before they jump to their feet, blood rushing to their head, and they gasp in anger and pain before they try and choke the sound back down, but it’s too late.

Through the darkened edges of their vision they see the woman swing her head towards them with a speed and attentiveness that could probably rival Undyne’s. The woman’s expression is—not fearful, but definitely on edge, until her eyes swing over Chara and Chara watches the exact moment that she decides Chara is not a threat, because she relaxes. Her mistake! Chara grips their knife at their belt, needing its reassuring presence, needing to be ready in case things go very very badly in the next. However fucking long they have to interact with this fucking woman. Chara does their best to wrap metaphorical hands around the panic in their chest and choke the life out of it, push it down into a cage, if they have a panic attack now they will— that would be bad. That would be very bad.

“Hi,” the woman says, cautiously. “You, uh… wouldn’t happen to have any idea where we are, would you?” Her voice is nice enough and she sounds genuinely confused, but Chara still hates her. They hate her with everything in them that isn’t currently devoted to hating the headache they have steadily building, and both of those things are taking precious resources from all the willpower they need to not start fucking hyperventilating, right now.

“No,” they spit, shaky.

“Okay,” the woman says. “That’s, uh, that’s cool.” She looks around, then swings her gaze up towards the sky. She jolts, clearly having noticed the _two extra moons, _and then stares at the sky for a while. “Okay. That’s one more moon than there should be, so I guess this isn’t Aselia.”

The implication that she’s _not from Earth _hits Chara so hard in the chest they forget for a moment to be pissed off.

“This isn’t _where_?” they ask, voice pitching upwards in their startled confusion. “_Where _the fuck is Aselia?”

The woman blinks, turns her attention back to Chara. She’s still kind of awkwardly kneeling, one knee pressed to the ground, one knee up, one hand on the ground and the other on her knee, like she got distracted in the middle of standing up and never finished the act. More interesting, Chara notes now that their vision isn’t blurring from the motion of sitting up, is the shining purple crystal that sits in her collarbone, pulsing with faint light like the crystal itself is—magic. What the fuck? Chara’s eyes flick away from the crystal only because then they see the pale spiderweb of scars that trail away from the crystal over her brown skin, down the entirety of her right arm, which is uncovered by her tank top plus sleeveless teal overcoat look. She looks—dumb, Chara wants to say, except actually it’s kind of cool, which thinking then pisses them off again. _She’s human._

She’s also squinting at Chara like they’re speaking a foreign language, all of a sudden. “Um. Like.” She seems to have trouble stringing together the words. “I dunno? The planet we live on?” And then she takes in Chara’s confusion and slowly looks delighted. “Are you- are you fucking telling me you _aren’t _from Aselia? Like you’re some kind of alien from Kratos’ bad sci-fi novels?”

Chara hates her excitement more than anything else.

“_I’m from fucking Earth!_” they scream at her, and just like that her chipper attitude and curiosity becomes too much, the fact that they aren’t on Earth with someone who has no fucking clue what Earth is—_and a human, at that!_—crashes into them all at once, and the delicate hold they had on their self-control shatters. Coherent thought flings itself out the window. Their lungs constrict, laughter escaping their mouth when they have the air enough for that, and they hate that, they fucking hate that they do that, they fucking hate that they _laugh _when they’re freaking out because _everyone says that’s fucking weird _(everyone who ever hated them, anyway, and even though they know this is not true some things like schoolyard taunts dig their claws into your heart and never quite release) and—

“Whoa, hey, okay,” the human woman says, kind of startled but not—upset or angry, which is good? Except the concern in her voice, the _pity_ still makes Chara’s blood boil. “I know things are kind of stressful right now, but—” She stops herself, surprisingly, before she says something Chara would want to rip her throat out for. “Never mind. Can I help?”

“No,” Chara spits, with what voice they can find between their shaky breaths and the laughter. There’s—the counting thing, but she probably doesn’t know it, and Chara doesn’t want to fucking rely on her to do that for them, anyway. They try and recall the number and the rhythms on their own, trying to latch their breathing onto it, but then

_She moves._

It’s not a clear threat it’s just her starting to get to her feet and Chara cannot let her approach them when they are _like this _so they just lift their knife with trembling hands and point it at her in promise even though in reality they couldn’t do fucking shit to her, at least not right now, not like this.

“Don’t move,” they command, with all of their anger. “Don’t fucking move.”

“Oh,” she says. And then she sits down. “Okay. I’m not moving.”

She does not seem threatened by the knife (_of course she fucking isn’t, at the moment,_) but she does seem to be taking this—seriously? Chara doesn’t know and they couldn’t care less. But they’re glad she’s not moving. Even if she was going to move _away, _how could they keep her eyes on her when they are like this if she’s not where she currently is, huh? How can they trust her to not come up from behind??

Stop thinking about it, Chara, focus on your breathing!

They run shaking fingers over the hilt of their knife, letting the texture soothe them, and as they breathe (_down from seven, hold, up from seven_) they slowly run their thumb against the dull edge of the knife, letting the cool of the metal ground them, pull them back down from this bullshit, and. They exhale, shakily, one last time. Everything still sucks and they don’t trust her an inch, wish she wasn’t here, wishes they were _back home _with _Frisk _and with _Asriel. _

Where the fuck are they!! Why are they here!!

At least they can breathe again, right now.

“Question,” the woman says, at length. “If that’s alright?”

Chara wonders if they can get away with saying no. Social conventions say they cannot. So.

“Yeah, sure,” they say, taking care to make it sound like they really really hate agreeing to this.

The woman grips her knees, one foot wiggling like the mere act of sitting still is going to kill her, which makes Chara think of all the restless energy Frisk has and makes them—not fond. Just miss Frisk harder. They run their thumb against the dull edge of their knife again. (_They do Not think about running it against the sharp edge._) (_They do, a little, but they refrain._)

It seems Chara’s venom makes the woman hesitate (_good_) but she presses on anyway (_awful_).

“Is… When that happens,” she says, talking around it like saying the words _when you have a panic attack _is a huge insult (_though Chara cannot honestly say if they’d prefer she was blunt with it_). “Is touching you bad?”

What.

“Yes,” Chara says, too startled to think about saying anything else, and like. The last thing they want is a human they don’t know touching them so! Better to answer honestly, probably!

The woman nods, and Chara wants to accuse her of judging but she does not appear to be. She continues: “Is that… is touching you bad in general, or—”

“Yes,” Chara says again, sharp. “I don’t want you touching me. Ever.”

She nods again. “Okay. I won’t.”

What the fuck.

If she did not have the face of a human (_framed by fluffy brown hair that makes Chara think of Frisk, again, god please stop thinking about Frisk, the homesickness will make you throw up_) Chara could almost, for a second, pretend they were talking to a monster. No one else they’ve ever met is this nice—well, _nice _might be generous, but… _good _about asking, Chara supposes they’ll go with. Like—what the fuck? Who just asks about boundaries up front, like that? No one?? Certainly no human.

“Why,” they start, mouth dry. They have to stop and wet their lips, swish saliva around to get their mouth working again. “Why are you. Why do you care?”

Her eyes fix on Chara, deep and so brown they are almost black. There’s a lot of patience, in those eyes, a lot of soft understanding that they want to shy away from, but cannot.

“It just—makes sense, you know? If we’re going to be traveling together. I don’t wanna fuck up by disregarding your boundaries.”

And that’s so so so _so _much more than Chara knows what to deal with. They should be grateful, maybe, but their brain latches onto the thing they do understand, which is the word _travel, _the words _traveling together, _the concept _traveling together with this human they met two minutes ago, _and even if she seems alright—

“I don’t wanna fucking travel!” they shout, hands gripping their knife a little too tight. “I wanna _go home_!”

The woman laughs. “I mean, me too,” she says, and here she reaches up to brush the crystal in her collarbone—is that _normal? _It doesn’t look like it’s _meant _to be there. “But I think we’re going to have to do a little sleuthing to figure out how to get us home, so—”

“No,” Chara says, before they are really aware of it. “I’m not- I can’t. Not with you. Not with some _fucking human_.”

They know that if they stay alone in an unfamiliar world chances are they’re probably just going to die (_they don’t want to die they want to go home so Frisk can hold their hand and hum something tuneless, so they can bury their face in Asriel’s fur again_) but they can’t they can’t they can’t, not with a human.

At Chara’s protest, the woman blinks.

“Oh,” she says, like she suddenly understands everything there is possibly to know about Chara, which is infuriating. She looks them up and down, those dark eyes scrutinizing. “Are you… not human?” She studies their collarbone, and Chara wonders if she’s looking for a crystal like she’s got, then wonders if maybe _she _isn’t human.

“Of course I’m human,” they spit. “Do I look like a monster? Monsters look like monsters!”

She squints like she has no idea what a monster is—or not like monsters Chara knows. Thinking about trying to explain that makes their headache return. “Well I don’t know,” she says. “Blades look a lot like humans, and your sweater makes it hard to tell if you’ve got a core crystal, but—well I guess if you aren’t from Aselia you probably aren’t a blade, anyway. You probably don’t even know what a blade is.”

Not the way she’s talking about them, no. Chara shakes their head.

“Do you want me to explain?” she asks

“I…” Chara says, because they’re curious, but they aren’t sure if they’re _that _curious, and they still kind of hate her and don’t trust her and don’t want to be here any longer than they have to and—

The wind blows, then. The grass shifts enough to reveal something glowing and blue on the ground about a foot from Chara, which they don’t get a better look at because the grass obscures it again a second later. Though Chara hates to take their eyes off this woman, she still hasn’t moved from where she’s sitting yet, and two seconds to investigate this thing that smells a lot like magic probably isn’t going to hurt. So Chara leans forward and pushes the grass to the side with the hand still gripping their knife (_like hell they’ll put it down_) and with the other reaches to retrieve what looks like a glowing stone not unsimilar to the one in the woman’s collarbone, except this one is blue.

What happens next is instantaneous.

There’s a sudden push of magic through Chara’s veins, or something _like_ magic, warm like a healing spell moving through them, heavy like Papyrus’ blue magic but underneath their skin instead of pressing down on them. There’s a flash of blue light, and the light coalesces until it is the shape of _a boy, _and the same moment he meets eyes with Chara the taste of horror and _hatred _crashes into their chest, nearly choking them.

The boy is kneeling in the grass _way too close _to them, but they’re transfixed by his sudden appearance and his existence at all. He looks to be their age—14 or so—golden hair falling down to his shoulders, eyes wide and blue and furious. More interesting than that is the blue stone set into his collarbone, outlined in gold and the surrounding skin free of scars like it’s _supposed _to be there, and more than that, lines of blue trace down his arms, connecting to open circles of blue in his palms and on the back of his hands. Chara takes a guess, assumes he’s not human, but—

“Who the hell are you?” he demands, voice sharp enough to make them jolt and shiver regardless, panic singing loud over the horror and fury still choking them. “Where the hell did you find my core crystal?”

Chara scrambles backward, some distant part of their brain registering that the horror in their chest _isn’t theirs, _that this _hatred _doesn’t belong to them, either. They want to know—more about that, more about that burning knot of _awareness _that suddenly sits in the back of their brain, but right now they’re just trying to figure out what the fuck a core crystal is (_that stone, in the boy’s collarbone?_) and trying to breathe because they feel certain they’re being threatened—

And then suddenly the boy is being yanked backwards and away from them.

It happens too fast for Chara to follow, truly. When they blink and look again, the boy is on the other side of the woman, to Chara's right—did he get _thrown_??—and the woman stands there on their left with her hands still out and her feet placed in a wide grounding stance that Chara has _definitely_ seen Undyne in, before. She doesn't move but there's a promise in her stance if not a threat. If the boy moves again, so will she.

"Anna!?" the boy spits, like she's almost his least favorite person. The taste of hatred in Chara's throat becomes a little less strong, but it sharpens with recognition, as well. "What the hell!"

“Don’t take this out on them, Mithos,” she answers, firm. “They aren’t from Aselia, they don’t know what a blade is, and—they’re a _child!_”

Chara wants to argue that even children are capable of horrible things, but can’t quite get their mouth moving fast enough for it.

“Honestly!” the woman continues. “_Why _is your first instinct to threaten everyone you run across—”

“You try waking up in an unfamiliar place with a driver _you don’t know_,” the boy—Mithos?—argues, his words as sharp as the taste of fury-fear on Chara’s tongue. He shoots a look at them past the woman—who is basically standing between the two of them now, even if not directly—and his face curls with hatred. “What the fuck, how did they even _get _my core crystal!? The last thing I remember—where’s Martel? Where’s Kratos? Where’s—”

“I don’t know,” the woman says. And she says it patiently enough, but still somehow the shape of her voice around the words makes Chara near-blindingly annoyed for a second, which is—strange in a way that’s familiar. “And I remember probably as much as you do,” the woman continues. “Which is to say, _absolutely none of how I got here. _I just know we aren’t in Aselia.”

Mithos scowls at that, at which the woman points towards the sky. Mithos scowls a little more in confusion, but turns his head upwards as requested. And then he stops. And he stares. And all that anger beating against Chara’s skull, all that hatred in their throat, it turns into horror, cold and settling into their stomach.

Their own panic brought on by this situation has mostly faded into curiosity, by this point, as Chara considers: are they feeling _his _emotions? They must be.

“…the ether here does feel… wrong…” Mithos says, slowly, quietly.

“Not Aselia?” the woman guesses.

Mithos shakes his head.

Chara gets to their feet, now, since they hate being the only one sitting. They hold onto their knife rather than sheathe it—a comfort thing, and if anyone complains they’ll get the knife shoved somewhere uncomfortable—and consider their new companion. They prod gently at where their minds seem to meet, gauging how like and unlike this is to sharing a body with Frisk. It feels more like joined hands than a warm embrace, and even as they prod they cannot seem to discern Mithos’ _thoughts, _only his emotions, bleeding constantly into them.

It’s strange, and for any other person it might be overwhelming and confusing and frustrating, but Chara finds the sensation fills a hole in their chest that they’d mostly forgotten existed.

Their prodding seems to draw Mithos’ attention to them. His head snaps back down, and though his glare is a little less open, that hatred bubbles up in whatever it is that ties the two of them together now.

“What’s going on?” Chara asks—steadier and clearer than one might think they had in them, but their curiosity is a dangerous thing. It’s so easy to remain calm when you need to ask questions, when you desire knowledge. “This…” they begin, searching how to phrase the question, then reconsider. “Actually, we should start with names, seeing as I’m tired of calling you the asshole human woman and Mister McShouty boy. I’m Chara.”

The woman laughs, which is good, Chara thinks, though they’re not quite sure they wanted her to laugh at this joke. It’s a kind laugh, at least, reminding them again more of Undyne than anyone else. Even the grin could match. “Anna,” she says, and she relaxes out of that tight stance that she’d been holding up to this point, though she keeps sending not-wary-but-definitely-knowing looks at Mithos, like she still expects him to do shit.

Mithos scowls before he gives his name. Chara doesn’t see the point in telling him they already know it. “…Mithos,” he says.

“You two know each other?” Chara asks next, because they think they’ll forget to ask if they put it off.

“Brother-in-law,” Anna answers, with a wry kind of look, right as Mithos says: “I hate her.”

Great. Family drama. Absolutely what Chara was looking forward to. (Not.)

“Third question,” Chara says, somewhat surprised they still have the floor but absolutely going to take advantage of that. They gesture between themselves and Mithos. “What the _fuck _is going on between us?”

“Oh,” Mithos says, and all of a sudden all of the hatred he was pouring into them stops. They can still feel it, gently, quietly, like a whisper, but that requires them to press their metaphorical ear up against the metaphorical wall that separates them and Mithos, now. “You resonated with me,” he says after that, like it means something.

“What does _that _mean?” Chara asks, since obviously it doesn’t. Not to them, anyway.

“You,” Mithos begins, and then _actually literally pouts, _and looks to Anna. “This is ridiculous. They really don’t know anything about the blade system, huh?”

“And why should they?” Anna asks. Mithos _glares _now, and, oh if looks could vaporize, Anna would be long long gone. “Look, it doesn’t matter, does it? We fixed things, remember, so you can just end the resonance and be fine.”

Mithos’ relief is palpable even with the wall up, as is the following wave of horror that hits a second later.

“I can’t,” he whispers.

“What?”

“It’s—I mean if I did, I’d just go back to being a core crystal, I think.” He looks… deeply troubled, trembling slightly where he stands, with anger or terror or some other emotion he can’t quite control and Chara can’t quite make out, though their breathing gets a little sharp, breaths coming way too close to each other as their body responds to someone else’s panic. “_They’re_ my only anchor,” Mithos says.

And then he laughs. It’s sharp and ugly and _furious, _just shy of sounding exactly like Flowey if only it were more cruel, though it’s not a far cry off from laughter Chara has heard from Asriel—except that Asriel’s is a little deeper, a little throatier, even at his still-young age, thanks to him being a goat-shaped boss monster and not some human-shaped not-human. Blade? Was that the word Anna’d used? It doesn’t matter right now. Mithos tugs on his hair like his grip on it is also the only grip he currently has on reality.

“All of our hard work! Gone!” he laughs, bright and horrified. Chara bites their tongue so that they don’t start laughing along as well, anxiously running fingers over the hilt of their knife as Mithos trembles with all of his terror. “If I didn’t have my memories I’d assume I was a brand new blade! This is _so. fucking. STUPID._”

Chara is not sure what to do. Chara is not sure there’s anything they can do.

But it seems—however it is that blades work, they need an anchor to hold their physical form. That’s easy enough to understand. It’s also easy to understand that Chara themselves is currently serving as Mithos’ anchor, presumably through that resonance thing Mithos mentioned. It’s not a complicated magic system at all, just a new one. And one that seems… a little unfair, maybe unhealthy. At least they and Mithos have separate bodies and can be autonomous on that front, but Chara is well aware how badly the whole _relying-on-a-single-person-for-your-very-existence _thing can go, and how much more badly might it go if you are bound by a system that enforces it?

They suppose they are about to find out.

“I mean, I could always drive you,” Anna offers, tentatively. “If you want.”

“No that’s worse,” Mithos says, immediately.

“Wow, you really hate me that much, huh,” Anna says, but it’s unsurprised, unbothered, kind of wry.

Mithos shoots her another glare. “No, I just have to _live with you _when all of this is over,” he argues. Anna shrugs like that’s fair, but—

“Well, you should ask your new driver if _they _mind,” she says, her smile kind of sharp, like she knows Mithos hadn’t thought of that. “The blade system’s… a lot, if you aren’t used to it. But I suppose if they don’t mind being an anchor for your existence and being subjugated to the emotion bleed…” She trails off, there.

“I don’t mind,” Chara says, automatically. “And I’d appreciate if you’d stop forgetting I was here.”

“Sorry,” Anna says.

Mithos is skeptical though, as he stares at them, even though the emotion bleed—presuming it is both ways, because most links of any sort tend to be—should tell him that Chara absolutely _is _okay with this arrangement. They’re still kind of jittery from the sudden change of scenery, from the absence of their very best friends, from the lack of knowledge of how to return _home, _but this… resonance thing, between them and Mithos? That’s alright. And, feeling Mithos’ skepticism, and guessing Anna is probably just as skeptical, Chara sighs and explains:

“I’ll assume the both of you are familiar with enough with magic various sorts,” they begin, barely waiting for their audience to nod before they keep talking. “And I’ll tell you that for a while I was a ghost hitching the ride on someone else’s soul. Compared to sharing a body? This is nothing.” They can’t access Mithos’ thoughts, only his emotions, and so long as there isn’t that blurring of thoughts and memories between them, Chara’s absolutely fine with this, they think.

Or fine enough, anyway. Mithos isn’t human, so that’s a bonus.

(_And they really did miss the clamor of someone else’s emotions in the back of their soul, even though they are well aware it’s probably wrong to miss that._)

“Oh,” Mithos says, like he understands. Anna’s eyes also light with recognition. “Yeah, I guess resonance would be way less intrusive than sharing a body.” He acts like he’s _familiar _with that—has he before? You know what:

“You shared a body before?” Chara asks, pitching it like they can’t believe it.

Mithos shakes his head, steady and not joking. “No,” he answers, sincerely. “But my sister did, for a while. So I get it, I guess. I’ve heard stories.”

“Same,” Anna says, and just her opening her mouth makes Mithos bristle, shoot yet another glare her direction. The emotion bleed is definitely muffled now, but that hatred rears its head along it, filling Chara’s lungs and though it abates it remains within reach, so Chara worries at it like a loose tooth for a moment.

It’s familiar, that loathing, that discomfort. It’s how they first felt towards Frisk—or, felt towards Frisk somewhere towards the middle of the journey, after enough of their initial hatred became unfortunate fondness. It’s the discomfort of _you’re human and usually humans are bad _crossed with _but unfortunately I like you _which becomes even more hatred because _how dare you go against my expectations, how dare you try and show me some humans are GOOD. _It’s so funny, how familiar it is, that Chara laughs despite themselves.

“What?” Mithos spits, turning the glare towards them.

And it’s—sharper, the hatred, for a moment. Chara wonders if that should scare them, but it’s still so _familiar, _so clearly the same as the hatred _they _feel for Anna, for other unfamiliar humans who they don’t trust an inch regardless of how okay they seem on the surface, that all Chara can do is keep laughing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” they apologize between giggles. “It’s just—You really hate humans, don’t you, Mithos?”

Mithos scowls. “Of course I do,” he says. “What kind of question is that?”

“Mithos,” Anna interjects, “if they don’t know fuck about blades, then they wouldn’t know—”

“Actually I do,” Chara interrupts, still laughing, though it has edges, now. Their smile is likely too wide, too unnatural, the bitterness of their knowledge shaking hands with the joy of meeting a kindred spirit. “You really think humans are limited to being horrible just because someone is a different species from them? Humans will find _anything _to be cruel over, I’ve found. If you’re the wrong gender, wrong skin color, wrong religion—They’ll throw you under the bus and then spit on you the moment it’s done running you over. So—yes, I do understand. I understand _quite well._”

Mithos blinks at them, slowly, but that hatred Chara had been feeling from him slowly starts to abate, tempered by his sudden understanding.

“I suppose they’re probably worse to blades, though,” Chara muses, knowing that as horrible as humans are to other humans, they’re worse to monsters, in their world.

“Considering they see us as tools long before they see us people? Yes,” Mithos answers, his smile all teeth.

“That’s…” Anna begins to protest, but drops it immediately. She sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” she admits. Her voice is quiet, her eyes distant, mouth scrunched up with the weight of something unpleasant as she crosses her arms and clutches at her own skin in a clear gesture of attempting to comfort herself. “Blades would all probably be better off if humans were never part of the equation, to be honest…”

Chara tilts their head at her, curious. “You’re human,” they say, simply.

She nods. “Yeah, I am,” she agrees. “But that’s… how I know how horrible we can be.” She shakes her head. Her face twitches with anger for a moment, and then it’s back to the tired sadness.

Oh.

Maybe… Maybe she isn’t so bad, then.

“Hmph,” Mithos says, the sound short and landing somewhere around _approving, _even if his mood is still generally sour. He sends Anna a look like he’s surprised. “And here I thought you were going to spew more of that _not all humans _bullshit,” he says.

“I mean, I don’t think blades are tools,” Anna argues, with a shrug. “But that also doesn’t change the fact that I don’t even run out of fingers when I’m counting up how many humans I know that feel the same way I do. So. Yeah. We suck.”

Feeling somewhat comforted by the fact they’re in the presence of not just one but _two _kindred spirits (_even though Anna’s view fall more in line with Frisk’s than their own_), Chara slowly returns their knife to its sheath on their belt. Needing _something _to fiddle with, though, they play with the locket hung around their neck instead. The wind stirs around them, making grass brush up against their legs in a way that makes Chara quite glad their socks go up as high as they do, because that sensation against their bare skin would have been hellish. The field is empty as far as they can see in every direction. The weather is nice, which is good, seeing as Chara doesn’t know how long they’re going to keep standing here. Maybe they should get moving? Where are they going to go? Anna’s still standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking uncomfortable. Mithos is watching the moons, emotion bleed pulled in a way not dissimilar to how Frisk’s mind would scrunch when considering a particularly difficult puzzle.

Chara decides they have a question they want to ask before they go any further.

“Hey, Anna?” they say.

She shakes her head and looks up at them, an inquisitive hum telling them that she’s listening.

“If you’re human, why do you have a crystal like Mithos does?”

“Oh!” Anna says, like she’s just remembered it. Her hand brushes up against it, fingers caressing it fondly, a funhouse mirror of how Chara runs their fingers over their locket right now. “It’s—My adoptive father is a blade? It’s his. There’s a thing blades can do where they can split their core crystal with their driver, which will, uh, heal you right up if you’re mortally wounded.” Here, she laughs. Chara doesn’t need more than one guess to figure out _why _she has that crystal, then. They wonder, though, if the scars have something to do with it? Or is that a side effect? Something else?

“Of course,” Anna continues, “if the crystal is removed from me I’ll die on the spot. And if Malos dies, so will I…” Here she trails off, face scrunching up with clear discomfort. She clutches at the crystal, pulling her skin along with the gesture as she turns to laugh nervously at Mithos. “It’s, uh, a really good thing we fixed the blade system, actually,” she says. “Y’know, made it so blades don’t need an anchor and all. Because…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

“…Your resonance snapped,” Mithos says, like he didn’t need her to finish to know.

Anna nods, looking even more uncomfortable. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it—I mean he must be okay, or _I _wouldn’t be right now. But.” She laughs again, miserable. “It’s really weird not feeling him in the back of my head, actually. Makes me kind of… antsy…”

True to her word, she fidgets where she stands, weight shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

“You’ll be fine,” Mithos tells her, not at all caring about her plight.

Anna pouts. “You can’t tell me it wasn’t weird for you when you stopped resonating with Kratos after _literal hundreds of years,_” she argues, and Mithos’ sails lose some wind. “I guess _you_ aren’t hearing the silence right now but. Augh.” She lets out a kind of agonized sound, and it’s clearly exaggerated, but Chara still feels for her, despite how uneasy she still makes them. They get it. They felt the same way when they separated from Frisk.

They wonder if they should say this. They don’t get the chance.

“Anyway!!” Anna says, brightly, like she’s desperate to change the subject. “We should probably figure out _where _the fuck we are and _what _the fuck we intend to do about that, but first—Chara?”

And she waits for them to answer.

“What?” they ask, huffing about it just to show they don’t like this.

“That whole thing about—is touching you just _generally _bad, always?” she asks. “And is it only bad if it’s me because I’m human, or would it be bad if Mithos did…?”

“I,” Chara says, with all the eloquence they have to them right now, which is approximately a thousand less than zero. What the fuck. She’s still asking about this? She still _cares_? It doesn’t make any sense, coming from a human—even one who understands just how shitty humans can be—but. Okay, fine, fine. They’ll answer. They just wish their face wasn’t so fucking red with embarrassment right now. The heat of shame and discomfort goes all the way down to their toes. “Yeah, I,” they say. “I would prefer if he didn’t. I would prefer if both of you just. Avoided it. Unless I say it’s okay.”

(_Mithos may not be human, but he looks human enough and, even if he didn’t there are some monsters that set off all of their red flags regardless of how Distinctly Not Human the touch of their skin feels like, so. Yes, yeah, absolutely Mithos should not touch Chara under any circumstances that they did not agree to._)

“Cool,” Anna says, looking _relaxed_? More at _ease? _What the fuck! And then after that sigh of relief, she rounds on Mithos, glaring daggers. “Keep that in _mind_, Mithos,” she threatens. “Or I will slaughter you.”

Chara doubts she’ll actually kill Mithos, but that tone promises violence in _some _fashion. Chara would be impressed if they weren’t so currently fucked up about the fact she’s worried about—_them_? They can’t decide if they’re mad (_they don’t need her pity or concern!!_) or if they just don’t understand it (_literally when has any human ever cared before??_) so they just clutch their locket tighter until the embellishments on its golden surface dig into their skin.

Mithos, meanwhile, puts his hands up in a mock surrender, rolling his eyes. “Geeze, geeze! Okay!”

“I literally haven’t forgiven you for Kratos so you’re on thin fucking ice,” Anna says.

“In my defense,” Mithos argues, “_he didn’t say it was a problem._”

“You lived with him for hundreds of years!! How did you _not notice_!!”

This feels kind of like the start of an argument that they’ve had a million times before, and the last thing Chara wants is to stand here while being forced to listen to them go at it, so they clear their throat loudly, and when that isn’t enough, raise their voice loudly and say: “Hey! Were we going to figure out where the fuck we’re going, or what?”

“Oh,” Anna says. She looks to Mithos. “Any ideas?”

He splutters. “Why should _I—_” But he cuts off at the look Anna gives him. “Alright, alright, I’m an Aegis, yes, you’re right. Of course I should know. Hold on.” He closes his eyes and Chara can _feel _his concentration sharpen, and more than that feel something like—magic, swell around him, and then release. He opens his eyes. “There was a dimensional transition event here recently—presumably the event that dropped us all here. I don’t have enough power alone to _cause_ another one, though, so… I guess we should try to figure out _what_ caused it and see if we can reverse it.”

Despair slowly grips at Chara’s throat again, despair and homesickness that they’d almost managed to forget about. What will Frisk and Asriel think, when they find Chara gone? What will _everyone else _think? Chara wants to go home.

“How long… do you think that will take?” they ask Mithos.

He shrugs. “I don’t feel a source anywhere near here. There might not even _be _one, on this end of the event. But if we can find some kind of way to amplify my power, I can see about contacting Martel, and then… well, we can figure it out.”

“We aren’t stranded, promise,” Anna insists, and Chara kind of wishes she wouldn’t. It feels too much like the optimism is faked. Reminds them enough of Frisk insisting on believing the best of a situation that it makes them hurt. Still, Anna smiles wide and makes her promise: “We’ll find a way for all of us to get home.”

“Sure,” Chara says.

They aren’t sure they believe it. But… They downgrade their list of things that happened to them today from _extremely shitty _to _could be worse. _


End file.
